A night filled with with love, laughter, and unity — the Pilipino American Coalition celebrates their 30th Pilipino Cultural Night among the Filipino community at the beach, enriched with culture and tradition.
Daphne Ong, a senior health care administration major and PAC’s current president, said that this year’s cultural night has a unique theme.
“The theme and our show is called ‘Paglalakabay’ which means ‘welcome home’ in Tagala,” Ong said. “We are basically welcoming our alumni and 30 years of history to our show and PAC was their home so coming to PCN welcomes them back.”
This year, the Pilipino Cultural Night is being held at the Carpenter’s Performing Arts center. According to Ong, each year the Pilipino Cultural Night presents different skits and performances that depicts what the organizations and the Philippines are all about.
“The show this year is basically a skit where five friends go home to the Philippines for their own different reasons and within the skit, they intertwine cultural dances,” Ong said. “For PCN we have five different suites that contain different areas of the Philippines, there’s a Spanish suite that contains waltzing, [a] mountain suite, [a] rural suite, [a] regional [suite], and the Moro suite — which is the Southern part of the Philippines.”
Michael Sarmiento, last year’s PAC president and an alumni from the studio art program, covered the fundamentals and background of the 30th Pilipino Cultural Night.
“The Pilipino Cultural Night is a way for students of the Filipino background to get connected with their culture,” Sarmiento said. “Here in America we don’t know much of where our parents come from, so this is our [chance] to connect back to our roots and appreciating our history and as a result, I got involved with the organization.”
According to Sarmiento, he hopes that the event will bring the Filipino community together and welcome each other at a special event.
“The Pilipino Cultural Night is a special event this year because it’s the 30th anniversary ,and I think more than ever we want this event to be a homecoming,” Sarmiento said. “Although the event is a homecoming for our returning alumni, it also welcomes our families and the Filipinos who come from the Philippines and provides them with the sense of home that they are reminded of where they come from.”
The event is filled with a variety of Filipino culture and the Pilipino American Coalition demonstrates the fundamentals and purpose of what the culture represents through skits, singing and dance performances, Sarmiento said.
The Pilipino American Coalition is an active student-run organization that serves the youth and Filipino communities in the Long Beach area.
The main focus of the organization is to provide positive youth and activities to assist alternative choices in establishing character development and community involvement through programs that promote education, culture, leadership and the community.
Sarniento also mentioned that there are other organizations that are involved and connected with PAC.
“We have Zeta Phi Rho, which is an Asian-American fraternity here and also two Asian-American sororities: Kappa Psi Epsilon, and Chi Delta Theta,” Sarmiento said. “We also have members from different organizations such as the Cambodian Society and the Vietnamese Student Association who participate in our Cultural Night.”
Each performance will showcase the bond and strength of the Filipino community through the importance of culture, family, tradition and pride.
The Pilipino American Coalition is a nonprofit student organization established in 1972 to celebrate the rise of the Filipino American community and was founded at CSULB.
In 1986, CSULB was inspired by the greater Southern California Filipino community and held its first Pilipino Cultural Night, “Anyong Pilipino: Portrait of the Filipino.”
Thirty years later, the Long Beach Pilipino Cultural Night continues to be a muse for preserving tradition while encouraging progress and awareness. The Pilipino Cultural Night will be held on March 26 at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center.
For ticket information visit the Carpenter Center box office or at the USU information booth or visit carpenterarts.org.
You spelled “Paglalakbay” and “Tagalog” wrong….